


you smiled (because you knew)

by flowersinxeirhair



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Dogs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:04:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5734114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersinxeirhair/pseuds/flowersinxeirhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> He was falling over himself in his efforts to keep up with the dog, tugging fruitlessly at the leash in attempts to slow him down. He was being carted unceremoniously through a bed of tulips when he crashed forcefully into someone’s chest with an undignified “oof”.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	you smiled (because you knew)

 

The dog was Pansy’s, and it was a monster. A hulking Harlequin Great Dane that had been very well trained to sit on the fifteenth time he was told. He could count them, Draco was sure, and mocked him with those ridiculous eyes.

Pansy was out of town for a wedding, something ‘too fancy for dogs’, she’d declared indignantly, nose in the air, and proceeded to beg Draco to look after her pet bear for the weekend. He’d agreed on the condition that she never asked again, and bought both of them dinner. Sure enough, come Friday night she appeared on his stoop with a leash in one hand and two bags laden down with food in the other. She was gone as soon as she’d arrived, all air kisses and car keys and garbled instructions for caring for the thing. Draco had stood, listened intently, and forgot every word the second the door closed. 

He looked down at the dog. It panted back up at him, mouth set in a wide, toothy smile.

“You’re not sleeping in my bed,” he challenged. The dog nosed at his thigh with its wet muzzle.

“Yeah, alright,” he muttered and dragged himself through to the kitchen. He plated up his own food first, nudging the dog away with his foot as he sniffed at the curry up on the counter, almost pushing Draco out of the way.

“Watch it,” he warned, and poured a bowl full of kibble, relishing in the brief moment alone while the dog ate.

He flicked the telly on to catch up on Masterchef, only getting three minutes in before the beast came lolloping in and clambered up on the sofa beside him.

“Hey, no- _no_ ,” he growled, holding his plate out of the dog’s reach and trying fruitlessly to shoo him off the cushions. He received a whine and a large pair of dark eyes in response. What an arsehole.

“Stop that.” He huffed, and settled back down to eat, strategically holding the plate of curry and rice over the arm of sofa, out of reach. The Dane dropped its head to his lap and fell asleep halfway through Masterchef. _Wonderful_ , Draco thought dryly as he felt his jeans damp with saliva.

It followed him, sticking close to his heels as he wrapped things up for the night, brushing his teeth and flicking the dishwasher on. He paused in the doorway to his bedroom, looking down at those ridiculous eyes and considering the possibility of letting him in for the night.

He shut the door. He didn’t need to be cutting about smelling like he’d slept at the pound. The dog could take the sofa, like every other guest. (Of which there were very choice few.)

Come morning, Draco had all but forgotten about the dog. He’d been having quite a wonderful dream, that he was far out at sea, drifting across wide, clear waters in a sailboat. He could feel the salty breeze in his hair, his mind completely clear of anything but the distant call of seagulls and the lulling roll of the waves beneath him.

Then he’d gotten up, and tripped over the panting beast the second he walked out of his room. He slammed into the opposite wall, yelping and reaching his hands out to steady himself, scrambling to keep on his feet. And then the dog moved, and he fell to the ground, cursing loudly and giving up on any dignified way to start the day. He gave in and patted the dog’s head as he clambered into his lap.

“Yeah, alright, you monster,” he grumbled, scratching behind its ears in a tender way that betrayed his gruff tone, “I suppose you want a walk.”

The word sent the dog into overdrive, sending Draco sprawling backwards.

“Good God.”

  
  


The local park wasn’t much of anything. A patch of grass, some swing sets, a small community allotment where they grew tomatoes in summer and pumpkins in winter. Draco was pretty sure it was where most of the town’s drug deals took place, but the dog didn’t know that. It seemed perfectly content to trot on ahead, dragging a reluctant Draco along behind him, occasionally pausing to sniff at lampposts and bins and interesting patches of weeds.

It probably wasn’t a bad thing for Draco to be out of the house. When he wasn’t at home, he was at work. And that was about it.

Occasionally, Pansy would drag him out for drinks at the corner pub. She’d fill him in on all her office gossip and he’d laugh in all the right places, and dodge her questions about his love life by hiding his face in a pint. Sometimes, Blaise would join them, and things would get a little rowdier. Mostly, though, he did not. His job kept him too busy to be spending late nights out on the piss, but when he did get a spare moment, it felt as though they were back at school together, sneaking out after curfew and crowding into a booth together to see who could get the most drunk for the least amount of money.

School had been decent. As decent as all-boys private boarding schools could be, he supposed. There had been no groping behind the church, no feverish nights in the prefects’ bathroom and far less snogging than he’d hoped for. The fact of the matter was that coming out to a room full of blokes inclined them more to avoiding him than anything else. For at least a few months after he’d come out, no one would even look at him, let alone touch him, not even brushing past him in the corridor. As if gay was a contagion. Don’t let Draco sneeze on you, you’ll wake up with a cock in your mouth.

Despite everything, he’d come out with a strong two As and a B at a-level,  gone on to study at culinary school and not a few years later, he’d opened a restaurant on Brighton Pier. It was hectic, but it kept him busy. It was good for him. He liked making food, it was simple, it made sense to him. The knife in his hand felt more like an extension of his arm, dicing and stirring committed to muscle memory. He was where he was meant to be.

That was not to say, the park. In fact, the scuzzy park behind his apartment block was probably the last place he was ever meant to be. With its broken glass and screaming children, Draco wondered  if he’d manage to make it out alive, especially with a bloody Great Dane trying to pull his shoulder out of its socket.

“Heel, you beast,” he groused, and went completely ignored. He really shouldn’t have expected anything less, the dog was rude and awfully trained. Why anyone had let Pansy have a dog was beyond him.

It’s nearing the start of February, and the cold bit at the tips of his ears and his toes. He hadn’t had enough forethought to put on much more than a coat and scarf, and was beginning to regret it as he lost the feeling in his fingers.

The morning was crisp and obnoxiously bright, sunlight streaming out from behind a smudge of grey clouds, a breeze finding the holes in his jumper and sending goosebumps up his arms.

He paused a moment while the dog relieved himself, admiring the hodgepodge collection of petunias and other brightly coloured flowers that he couldn’t even pretend to name. Suddenly, the distant sound of barking had his beast’s ears bolt-upright.

He glared down at the dog sharpish. “Don’t you dare-”

Before he could finish the warning, the dog bolted off at a gallop, dragging Draco, tripping over his own feet, behind him.

“Woah,” he yelped as the thing picked up speed, going faster than his car did on good days, “Woah-woah-woah--”

He was falling over himself in his efforts to keep up with the dog, tugging fruitlessly at the leash in attempts to slow him down. He was being carted unceremoniously through a bed of tulips when he crashed forcefully into someone’s chest with an undignified “oof”.

He tried to step back from the stranger, but two great dogs were barking loudly by his feet. At the moment he tried to put some distance between himself and the other man, they decided to chase one another in a circle about their feet, the leashes tangling and wrapping about the back of Draco’s knees.

“Fucking--” he hissed, leaning back so he wasn’t pressed so flush against the stranger, and in doing so managed to overbalance them and toppled over backwards, bringing the man down on top of him.

He cursed once more, for the spectacular job of falling over not once, but twice in one morning. He propped himself up on his elbows, looking up and feeling the breath knocked out of him for the second time in the span of two minutes.

The stranger on top of him had the largest pair of coffee eyes he’d ever seen, set against smooth skin barely a shade lighter, and a wild head of curls. Draco’s chest felt bizarrely tight, and all of a sudden he had no motivation to move whatsoever.

The stranger cleared his throat, springing Draco into action.

“Sorry-” he began, pulling the leash out from underneath him, and attempting to de-tangle their legs. “He--  he’s quite a bit stronger than me.”

The stranger smiled, and Draco’s heart skipped a beat. The corners of his eyes crinkled, dimples appearing in his cheeks as he was sent a toothy grin.

“The dog?” he asked, brows raised, and that was it. That was the voice that Draco wanted to hear every day for the rest of his life.

“I-- yeah,” Draco replied quickly, after a long pause spent trying not to think about where his knee was pressed against the stranger’s thigh.

“He sure is big,” he replied, tugging a leg free of the entangled leashes and limbs. The Dane lifted its nose up to the man’s face, sniffing about curiously. “He’s a big softie, is all,” he chuckled, mussing its ears and earning a happy bark in response.

Draco jumped as something wet nosed at his hand. A great shaggy thing was huffing about by his side, all black fur and beady eyes.

“Oh, that’s Padfoot,” the stranger piped up, “He’s pretty much still a puppy. How old is yours?”

Draco looked up, caught once more in those hazel eyes. “Mine? Oh-- no, he’s not-- I’m dogsitting, for a friend,” _Dogsitting?_ Since when was _dogsitting_  even a word in Draco’s bloody vocabulary- _dogsitting_ \- “I don’t even know its name, actually.”

“You don’t know his name?” The stranger sounded aghast.

Draco shook his head, tentatively giving Padfoot’s head a pat.

The man  hooked a finger through the dog’s collar, swivelling around to read the tag. “Salazar, there you go, he’s called Salazar,” he announced triumphantly.

“What a ridiculous name,” Draco muttered. The stranger laughed. Draco wanted to record the sound and have it play him to sleep each night.

For a moment, neither man said anything, and Draco found he didn’t mind it, tangled up with this beautiful stranger. His face was carved from stone, it seemed. Gorgeous, dusky stone.

Draco moved first, anxiously shuffling his weight from one hand to the other.

“We should--”

“Yeah, maybe if you just--”

“Right, and you--”

Slowly, they detangled themselves. They came to standing, a respectable distance from one another, for the first time in their meeting, and Jesus Mary and Joseph, this man had been sent from the Heavens to test him.

He was wearing a maroon jumper that was far too large for him, emblazoned with a bright yellow H over a pair of obscenely tight blue jeans. He, unlike Draco, seemed to have thought twice before leaving the house, and had on a peacoat absolutely covered in dog hair, and his long fingers were swathed in grey mittens. Draco wondered if hands were as soft as they looked.

“So,” the stranger offered with a bright smile, “it’s been fun, but, ah. I gotta get Pads back home.”

“Sure, right, no, of course, uh. Have a nice day,” Draco replied quickly, shifting the leash from his left hand to his right.

Another dazzling smile. Another skipped beat. God.

“See you around, bright eyes,” he called, and turned to leave.

Draco was too busy feeling light-headed to think up an intelligent response until the stranger was halfway across the park.

“It’s Draco,” he called, rising up on his tiptoes as though that would make his voice reach further.

The man turned his head to grin at Draco one last time.

“Harry,” he called in response.

Draco’s heart fluttered.

Harry.

He was fucked.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> so many thanks to my lovely girlfriend [bee](http://sluttysuperheroes.tumblr.com/) for betaing and cheerleading <3
> 
> this is loosely based on that one bit from 101 dalmatians bc im trash
> 
> title is from falstaff: "when i saw you, i fell in love and you smiled because you knew"
> 
> let me know if ur digging this and maybe i'll write more ??? hmu on [tumblr](http://flowersinxeirhair.tumblr.com/) if u want


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